


(This Problem) Lies in Me

by nagi_schwarz



Series: The Thellas Chronicles [6]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2019-03-28 11:54:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13903485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: Written for the pleasure/pain comment_fic prompt: "Any, Any, with great pain comes great change."Kate knows Evan has to hit rock bottom before he can start to rise, but it hurts to watch all the same.





	(This Problem) Lies in Me

The fascinating thing about speaking to Thellas was that she was so incredibly in tune with her emotions - because she’d had multiple bodies and understood better than anyone Kate had ever met how hormones and circumstances affected thoughts and feelings. In their therapy sessions, Kate asked Thellas how she’d been feeling, how her day had gone, and she could track very clearly what triggered different emotions, responses, trains of thought. She was brilliant. No wonder her closest friend on the Expedition was Rodney McKay. He was probably the only person who came close to how brilliant she was. (She was more than smart enough not to make Rodney feel that difference in intellect.)  
  
Kate had sent back to the SGC for everything she could get her hands on about Tok’ra and how the symbiotic relationship worked. Unfortunately, the most detailed information she had was about the time Samantha Carter was forcefully taken by Jolinar and the time General O’Neill was overtaken by Kanan. Interviews with Jacob Carter were sparse and short because he was usually only on Earth on Tok’ra business.  
  
But Kate knew that whenever a Tok’ra blended with a host, each blending was different. The way Thellas had manifested in her previous bodies would be totally different from how she manifested in Evan’s. The first time Thellas’s consciousness encountered Evan’s, she’d have been confronted with every thought and belief that made Evan who he was and be forced to judge herself by his standards. Given how well Thellas seemed to be managing their arrangement, she must have been pretty all right by Evan’s standards.  
  
What no one could tell Kate was how Evan had reacted after encountering Thellas’s consciousness. Thellas was centuries old, had lived in multiple bodies, been born with the genetic memory of the Tok’ra on top of that, and constantly been at war.   
  
In stark contrast to Thellas, Evan was a wreck. He never knew what he was feeling, or why he’d thought a certain thing. He was an officer, far more by-the-book than John or even Anne, but traditional wasn’t what kept him close-mouthed, because he’d been raised by women and without a father figure on a hippy commune in the Bay Area. He wasn’t ashamed of his emotions. He just - didn’t have any anymore.  
  
People thought depression was sadness.  
  
Evan described it pretty well. “It’s not - I’m not sad. I don’t want to cry. I just open my eyes in the morning and I think,  _why?_ Why am I still here? Why am I still breathing? Why should I bother to get out of bed? But, you know. Duty. Orders.” He shrugged, his expression distressingly nonchalant.  
  
Evan was so awash in despair that he was numb, couldn’t feel anything anymore. It was no wonder that he never knew how he felt or why he felt things, because he was one raw nerve and even the faintest brush registered as agony but that agony was white noise compared to everything he was already drowning in. He was running on a regular basis, but he’d been doing that even while he was planning to take his own life, probably would have gone running on the day of. He was drawing, but then he’d been doing that during the crisis as well.  
  
(Kate had looked through his sketchbook. His talent was astounding. She hadn’t thought that anyone whose entire life was the military would have the time to hone such a skill, but his pictures were infused with life, animation, were a breath away from leaping off the page. His nightmare-memories were also horrifyingly vivid. And he was in love with Elizabeth, which explained her offering to be his support system - bad idea - and his turning her down.)  
  
Ronon reported that he and Evan spent time in the kitchens together, cooking. Ronon thought it was hilarious, that the Marines were terrified of both him and Evan (Evan had stopped holding back in sparring and now only Teyla and Ronon were a match for him on the mats; sometimes both of them at once were what it took to take him down) but that they also really, really liked the things Evan cooked (and baked - Evan had taught him the difference between cooking and baking).

Kate had been a little leery of Ronon as a choice for Evan’s emotional support - and heartbroken that Evan had no one else, but he didn’t have the instant camaraderie of a gate team - but he was observant.  
  
“Cooking helps,” he said. “It’s not enough, though. Don’t know what is. He’s alive. Not sure he’s living.”  
  
The most difficult thing about talking to Evan was that Kate always came away from their sessions hungry, because Evan always recounted his day in perfect AAR detail, including his cooking sessions with Ronon, and Evan was amazing in the kitchen. The things he made - and the detail with which he described them - were exotic and unique and Kate wanted to eat all of them.  
  
Finally, after two weeks of this endless recitation, Kate cut him off.  
  
“Evan,” she said, “you’re doing things. That’s good. But you did things before. What’s changed now?”  
  
He paused, confused. Then he fell silent, contemplating. Finally he shrugged. “I spend more time with other people, I guess. You. Ronon.”

Kate winced internally. And then she realized. “How often do you spend time with Thellas?”  
  
He stared at her. “We’re together  _all the time.”_  
  
“But do you talk to her? Spend time with her? Just the two of you.”  
  
“She talks to me all the time when I’m in the driver’s seat.”  
  
Notably absent was any mention of him talking to her.  
  
Kate leaned in. “Do you hate Thellas?”  
  
He sat back, shocked. “No! I - she saved me.”  
  
“But you didn’t want to be saved.”  
  
“At the time I did.”  
  
“At the time you were wrong. You said so yourself.”  
  
He bit his lip, looked away.  
  
“Look at me,” Kate said, and he met her gaze, startled by the sharpness of her tone.  
  
She caught his gaze and held it, leaned in closer.  
  
“Evan,” she said, “you deserve to live.”  
  
Panic flared in his eyes, and he shook his head. He probably wasn’t even aware of what he’d just told her, what he’d just admitted.  
  
Her heart broke a little more, but she soldiered on.  
  
“You are not a monster.”  
  
He shook his head again, and his hands curled into fists on his lap.  
  
“You are still yourself, you are not just Thellas’s vehicle or shadow.” Kate reached out, covered his hands with hers, grounding him to her presence. “You are a person. You’re still here. We know you’re here, and we see you, and if you were gone, we would miss you.”  
  
Kate had seen a lot of painful things in her line of work. The way Evan crumpled in on himself, buried his face in his hands, and sobbed silently, was one of the most painful. The way he made himself as small and still as possible, tried to be as quiet was possible, said so much.  
  
He was terrified of anyone ever noticing him, and he was desperate not to be a burden on anyone, to not be at all. Because in taking on Thellas he’d lost himself, and he didn’t know how to get himself back.

As low a point as his suicide plans had been, he probably felt worse now.   
  
But he was feeling again. And that was the first step. She knew his feelings would grow from here, would grow sharper and brighter and, over time, better.  
  
She held him close while he cried, while he apologized, and she fetched him a cold wet washcloth to press to his face so no one would know he’d been crying when he left.  
  
She meditated for a long time after he departed, so long she missed dinner.  
  
But the KP Marines had set aside a plate for her, kept it warm in one of the ovens.  
  
And someone had left her a slice of homemade red velvet cake with delicate frosting and note that said,  _Thank you._  
  
The next day, she saw Evan Lorne smile for the first time - Evan, not Thellas - and she knew he would be all right. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song Monster by Imagine Dragons.


End file.
